Milton Keynes council should be ashamed of itself over the amount of time it is taking to process new housing benefit claims, a leading Tory councillor has claimed.

Edith Bald says tenancies are being put at risk because new claims are taking staff almost two months to process.

She says the average time is 53 days, compared to the target time of just 17 days.

As a result there is understood to be a backlog of around 7,000 claims.

Councillor Bald first discovered there was a problem last July when one of her constituents was threatened with eviction because her claim was stuck in the council backlog.

At the time MK Council bosses acknowledged the delays were unacceptable and promised things would speed up.

This week Edith said: “I am appalled that six months on we are seeing no improvement whatsoever to the time taken to process benefit claims. It is despicable and the Labour-run council should be ashamed of itself.”

She added: “And before anyone tries to blame austerity, this has nothing to do with budget cuts. This is about a failure to get to grips with performance .

“The most vulnerable people in Milton Keynes are on the receiving end of these failures.”